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I wouldn't call it forced...but I'm not sure that I'd call it slant rhyme, either! You've got the exact rhymed of 'day' and 'way', and the exact rhymes of 'delayed' and 'made'. Your rhyme scheme is abba--nothing slanted at all!

Yes, Colin--and truly, there's no rule that says you absolutely must include slant rhyme in every poem. I just want people to be aware of it, and to know that it's okay, even desirable in some cases, and that it's better than a bad or forced rhyme.

If a poet has the words that would make the PERFECT slant rhyme poem or the words for a traditional rhyme that would be just as PERFECT... would publishers have a preference if the poem was the same in every other way?

I had something really memorable to write here but I forgot what it was.
Gerald Shuler

Gerald, I don't really know, but I'll give you what I suspect to be true. It really depends on the market--I'm thinking of a publication like "Ideals" magazine that publishes very traditional poetry, almost always with an upbeat mood--they might be more likely to go for the "true" rhyme.

But a publication that goes for edgier stuff might prefer slant rhyme. Like Helen said in one of her posts on this thread--for some subjects, you just don't want to be all "tumpty tum". In my opinion, slant rhyme is more literary.

That's all conjecture--what I do know is that one website I visited recently stated that they rejected almost all rhymed poety in favor of free verse. So those of you who write rhymed stuff may have to do some digging to find places that are looking for what you do.

I guess I didn't quite get it-maybe because I forced the slants instead of using the rhyme words I use.
Anyway, I tried it on a couple of poems in the critique Circle and guess what?
Readers pointed out that they didn't RHYME